Originally Posted by professor

i think several of these things (lebron, teammates, and rebs, esp off rebs) go together and that the lynch pin is not letting lebron into the paint. he gets past his guy into the paint and several things can happen (all bad): uncontested easy baskets that fire him up; help rotation by our players resulting in, at best, a kick out to an open teammate of his, or, at worst, a foul and one for lbj; our bigs leave their bigs to help out and their bigs are freed up for put backs and easy off rebs.

i'm personally in favor of lbj's man sagging off and making him beat us from the perimeter (i.e. give him anything from 17-18 feet on out). seems to me from past games (and from the cleve. nj series) that lbj sort of succumbs to the ease of that fadeaway jumper and the belief that he's a better perimeter shooter than he is. i'm not saying he can't make it, but cleveland doesn't have a chance to win the series (sure, maybe a game) if most of his shots are coming from there. keep him on the perimeter and lbj's role players aren't a factor and we win the boards.

the other thing, on the other end, is movement without the ball and of the ball, good screens and intelligent easy passes...don't let them get confidence by having hughes and lbj get steals and fast break points